The scene: “I wanted the restaurant to be like my best friend’s older brother’s really cool room when I was growing up,” says chef/owner Nick Badovinus. To that end he has created a garage aesthetic, one big room of brick, metal and very high ceilings with exposed ductwork, jammed full of vintage music posters, antique beer signs and mirrors, model planes, all sorts of pop culture kitsch, and old motorcycle gas tanks as decorations across the top of the self-serve, glass doored convenience store-style beverage coolers. There is even a whole motorcycle on a raised catwalk in front of the centerpiece, an original 1976 Farrah Fawcett-Majors swimsuit poster, the bestselling pin up art in history. There are tons of this stuff, with more discoveries everywhere you look, including the ceiling.

Even the outdoor area captures the playful feel of a bygone youth with weather-proof game tables including ping pong and bumper bool, and lots of picnic table seating. You enter on the catwalk level next to the motorcycle, take a few metal steps down, almost like entering a factory, and there is a long counter to order at in front of an open kitchen. Bags of burger rolls stashed in plain view everywhere give sort of a classic fast food burger joint feel. The counter holds several “bubblers,” or old-school clear juice dispensers like the kind once found in neighborhood pizzerias for brightly colored orange and grape drinks. There are several taps for draft beer between the registers and bubblers, and the row of bottle and can coolers sits along the far side, full of Mexican Coke and other popular soda options. The rest of the ample space is filled with lots of wooden tables and high-top ledges with red vinyl-topped chrome diner-style bar stools. There are several flat-screen TVs hung around for those who want to watch games, while the background music evokes Pulp Fiction memories.

All of this is carefully orchestrated to transport the diner back in time to the '60s to '80s, before fine-dining chefs — like Badovinus, who cooked at Dallas’ most famous fancy eatery, the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek, and owns about 10 local restaurants, including a very high-end steakhouse, Town Hearth — started adding foie gras and other radical ingredients to burgers.

“We wanted Off-Site Kitchen to be about a less complicated, kinder, gentler time for burgers," he says. "A great burger 50 years ago is still a great burger today, red meat still has a celebratory meaning, and the idea of ‘hey, let’s go get a burger’ still has a universal appeal.” To that end, Off-Site Kitchen is a great place to go get a burger.

The food: For all of the “kinder, simpler,” talk, Off-Site Kitchen hides plenty of culinary finesse behind its fast-casual façade, and while chef Badovinus might not be serving duck patties or shaving truffles, he still takes great pains to elevate the seemingly humble dishes, starting with the main event, the burgers. He describes this as “a throwback but with a modern approach to ingredient quality and techniques.” After much trial and sampling, he selected a beef purveyor in Nebraska, where all the meat is sourced, then ground daily in-house, using a very particular technique that Badovinus feels is the cornerstone of his success. Only shoulder meat is used, which is put in a freezer until almost frozen, then ground on machines that are also kept in the freezers — all the parts that touch the meat, including augers and blades, are kept cold because friction in the grinding process generates heat, and he believes that heat breaks down the fat and meat in a way that causes burgers to taste stringy. “Cold grinding gives it a better mouthfeel, and that’s what you are looking for in a great burger,” says Badovinus. The buns are perfect, sort of between traditional and brioche style, high with shiny domed tops, sourced from locally beloved Village Baking Company, and the burgers are fabulous.

There are about eight options, including a very basic plain burger and cheeseburger, plus some funky ones, such as the Locals Only, with mustard, bacon, American cheese and sliced jalapeño, or the popular Double Deluxe, two generous patties with bacon, two slices of American cheese and “secret sauce.” If you’re hungry, this is a great hefty choice, but the basic bacon cheeseburger is plenty good, and my other favorite is the green chile cheeseburger with bacon, lettuce, tomato and muenster cheese. All the patties are cooked “Oklahoma-style,” smashed on a flattop grill with embedded chopped raw onions that caramelize as the burgers cook, similar to the style used at the Smashburger chain and increasingly becoming the choice of top burger chefs coast to coast.

These days it is harder to find great fries than great burgers, and this is often the weak link. Not here. Badovinus takes the same culinary-school approach, starting with “cured,” cellar-aged potatoes so more of the sugar converts to starch. The chef soaks them overnight in ice water, blanches them first, then fries them, using a touch of baking soda for added crispiness, and tosses a little California garlic salt on at the end. The result is masterful, addictive, as good a fast food-style skinny crispy fry as you will find, and we can not stop eating them long after we should.

The fries are a must, but you don’t need a burger to relish a meal here. The restaurant also slow roasts big cuts of meat to make pork shoulder and beef brisket sandwiches and tacos. The pork sandwich is served with barbecue sauce and cole slaw on a burger bun, and the standout is the brisket, seasoned with cracked black pepper and cooked for 48 hours, then cut into big, hearty but tender chunks, and served on a sub roll with Swiss cheese, caramelized onions, lettuce, tomato, house slaw and a wonderful cherry pepper kraut, which adds the perfect amount of heat without overdoing it — this is a big, fabulous sandwich.

The chef’s twist on grilled ham and cheese, the turkey club, and many other variants on classic sandwiches are also available. The other signature dish here not to be missed is the Sloppy Joe tacos, one of several taco options. “These are a mashup of my two favorite public school lunches,” chef Badovinus says. The dish somehow manages to be true to childhood memories of both, with a classic Sloppy Joe ground beef in sauce, and the far-from-authentic-Mexican texture and style of quintessential “homemade” from a box hard tacos at home.

Even the bubblers take a gourmet approach that is leaps and bounds beyond the sugary fake fruit drinks I grew up with, including a few flavored lemonades, iced teas and a tropical fruit mashup that changes daily — the mango peach one is perfect. Besides excellent takes on classic American comfort foods, the common theme here is a messy roll-up-your-sleeves approach that involves minimal silverware and maximum napkins. Off-Site Kitchen’s motto is “Come On! Eat With Your Hands,” and it lives up to that ideal.

Pilgrimage-worthy?: No, but if you’re in Dallas looking for a fun casual place to get an excellent burger and fries and maybe watch a game or drink some beers in the sun, this is it.

Larry Olmsted has been writing about food and travel for more than 15 years. An avid eater and cook, he has attended cooking classes in Italy, judged a barbecue contest and once dined with Julia Child. Follow him on Twitter, @TravelFoodGuy, and if there's a unique American eatery you think he should visit, send him an e-mail at travel@usatoday.com. Some of the venues reviewed by this column provided complimentary services.

Popular chain Shake Shack's non-meat option, the ’Shroom Burger (right), is made with a crisp-fried portobello mushroom filled with melted muenster and cheddar cheeses, then topped with lettuce, tomato and ShackSauce.
William Brinson

Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten eschews animal proteins and their facsimiles for vegetable-forward plates at his newly opened abcV restaurant, a plant-centric sequel to his James Beard Award-winning ABC Kitchen, in Manhattan.
courtesy of abcV